Pummeled by procurement concerns on a 20-year curbside recycling contract, Mayor Sylvester Turner said Friday he will seek a new round of proposals from the four final bidders.

Turner had met with small groups of City Council members Thursday to get a better sense of the concerns they repeatedly have raised since the proposal first was rolled out in late June, and announced his decision early Friday.

"This action is designed to put to rest the concerns raised by members of council, which must approve the contract before it takes effect," Turner said. "Whatever the result, my only allegiance is to this city and I will always seek what is in its best interest."

The council on Wednesday delayed a vote on a proposal to award FCC Environmental a 20-year $48 million deal that would have seen Houston send all 65,000 tons of bottles, cans and boxes its citizens recycle annually to a new processing facility the Spanish firm would build in northeast Houston. The deal, which was to start next year, also would have returned glass to the curbside recycling program.

Turner repeatedly had pronounced the proposal "a good deal" and stressed that the city's procurement director, the legal department and the City Controller had signed off on the bidding process.

Many council members, however, had questioned the process that was used to choose FCC as the winning bidder, particularly focusing on the length of the contract term and how the companies' prices were evaluated.

Vendors repeatedly were told during the procurement process that the contract term would run 10 years, with up to two five-year extensions, but the city let FCC submit a 15-year initial term under an "exception" clause in the request for proposals.

Competing vendors said they would have submitted 15-year bids if they had known their proposals would not be rejected, adding they did not learn FCC had proceeded with a 15-year proposal until after the firm had been selected. That led some council members to question whether the second round of "best and final" bids the city evaluated had been equitable, since the firms were competing using different terms that likely would affect their proposed prices.